Measles cases up; Brit to blame

From the Omaha World-Herald today, noting that US cases of measles have gone up dramatically, due to lack of vaccination, which in turn is due to parents' fears that "MMR" (measles/mumps/rubella) vaccine causes autism:

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The notion of a link received its biggest boost in the late 1990s when a British doctor, Andrew Wakefield, published a paper in the Lancet, a prestigious medical journal. His research suggested that the combined measles, mumps and rubella vaccination could cause autism in children.
But Wakefield's research ultimately was found to be fraudulent, the Lancet retracted his paper, and he was stripped of his medical license in Great Britain.
Wakefield's claim "was enough to set the ball rolling for what unfolded over the next couple of decades," said Dr. Thomas Wassink, co-director of the Children's Hospital Autism Center at the University of Iowa. "You realize how hard it is to undo the damage that's been done."
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This discounted, discredited, fraud of a "scientist" has caused a lot of needless pain and suffering.

We were quick to act with that one. People are held accountable for their actions in England.

You'd be surprised what people get away with in America...

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Not really, you seem to be able to get away with quite a bit taking adavantage of freedom of speech. If you come to NYC, You'd do well standing on a street corner on a soap box yelling "We do things much better in England, so you should listen to me and learn" There used to be lots of folks doing that sort of preaching. Kind of miss it. why don't you re-institute that? You'd get more viewers that way than here, I think.

It might also be a dangerous exercise: gun control and looking after the poor through higher taxes aren't ideas many people here are willing to accept.

But vaccinations are important and should be had. Even if not all-at-once as is the tendency, but most American paediatricians will offer the option of a more spread out vaccination schedule. Which is sensible.

If your immunity system is low for whatever reason, and you get a flu shot, and you are over 50, just a word of caution here, (as it did in my case) you might develop shingles. They won't tell you that but... the risk is there.

For the past ten years or so, we have been in the "vaccinate the kids" stage of life. One vaccine being pushed was for chicken pox, and now I read where the chicken pox vaccine weakens to the possible point of ineffectiveness within five years. My mom says that she and her friends used to have chicken pox parties where the friends of a kid that had the chicken pox would be made to play with the infected child and get exposed so that everyone was miserable at the same time and got their immunity. In light of all the uncertainty, I do not know whether to get my daughter the guardisol vacine-there seem to be fewer and fewer clear options.

The recommended age for receiving this vacine is 11 or 12, so it's too young for us to pass the buck to her. I will probably ask our pediatrician what he did with their kids and do the same. I am a firm believer in going to a pediatrician who has raised kids himself/herself.